I apol­o­gize sin­cerely. I have no pic­tures from Christ­mas Day in Sioux Falls. I guess I’m just a dummy loser! I had for­got­ten it on the counter-top before we left, and that really sucks because it was a good time, with a good meal, and Holli even made it up for a lit­tle bit. I will hope­fully get pic­tures up from Britt or some­one else’s cam­era. With all those cam­eras there were a lot of bloody pic­tures taken.

Merry Christ­mas every­one! It was a good Christ­mas, I think. I nor­mally don’t care much for this hol­i­day. I think it’s that every­one makes such a huge deal ab0ut it, and it’s become such a com­mer­cial (.com) hol­i­day, that I just get sick of it. I do, how­ever, enjoy the fam­ily time and get­ting to see every­one and not hav­ing to do home­work parts of it. It’s always the same crappy music and the same crappy com­mer­cials. But, enough about that.

There was Christ­mas Eve mass first. It was nice. There is always a nice assort­ment of musi­cians set to per­form before­hand. This year Brenna and Sue did a duet, and Micaela and Lonie did also. Don’t worry, I have pic­tures. The before mass music is always a treat.

From there we went home quick. Then it was off to Grandma’s. Here is where the Rausch fam­ily gath­ers to eat, and talk, and open presents. Right before we got to Grandma’s, we went to Sue’s to get Grandma’s present. Then Bryce and Dan moved it into Grandma’s house. We got there, and just as soon as my shoes were off, I was told that I had to help Dad with his grilling. This was told to me in a sort of code phrase, which left me very con­fused. I thought it was code for some­thing else, then we get there and he WAS grilling. What? But, then Bryce and Dan moved out Sue’s dish­washer. Ok. That’s cool. But I took pic­tures of it, obvi­ously. Then Sue asked me to look at her pic­tures. She gets to the pic­tures of the dish­washer, shows it to me, and says, “Is that what your mom is get­ting for Christ­mas?” Oh no! Think­ing fast, I say, “Yeah.” Then Sue says, “Does she know she’s get­ting that?” I say, “She’ll know soon enough.” and then I quickly change the sub­ject. I grabbed Bryce and Dan, told them what’s what, and Bryce accused me of hav­ing no Christ­mas spirit. Truth be told, I was trey close to ruin­ing Christmas.

We ate, and enjoyed it. We talked, then we dis­cov­ered David in the liv­ing room, and took some funny pic­tures. He looked like he was dead, so we added some flow­ers and held a vigil for him. The best part was when he woke up. He slowly comes around, hav­ing no idea what was going on, rubs his eyes, sits up, and says, “Hey.” Then the presents.

I got some nice things from Sue and Karen. Sue got me the Chronic-what-cles of Nar­nia box set, and Karen got me socks and an orna­ment. We brought Grandma’s present up, assem­bled it, and moved stuff around. Then we took about 30 fam­ily pho­tos, both for the Val Rausch group and the whole dang fam­ily. That was com­pli­cated. I think that next year, if we do that, we should get some­one from Paul and Leanne’s place to take it. Then we lis­tened to an inter­view with Santa, and then we headed home.

At home I wit­nessed the great­est double-cross ever. My mom con­vinced my sis­ter Brenna that Molly was get­ting a cam­era. She then had Brenna “let slip” to Molly that she was get­ting a gui­tar. So, Molly thought she already knew what she was get­ting, and wouldn’t be look­ing any­more. Then comes Christ­mas, and Molly goes and gets her present which is a trum­pet, and Brenna got the cam­era. Nei­ther of the girls had any idea even though both of them thought they knew what they were get­ting. It was a stroke of genius that made me proud of my mother. I snapped a pic­ture of the girls to commemorate.

The next day we headed to Sioux Falls for the Miles Fam­ily gath­er­ing. Bryce came seper­ate, with Lind­sey, a bit later, so it was me and the Wiese girls, hang­ing out. There were a lot of ques­tions about Holli, and then there were ques­tions about Trevor, Britt’s (boy)friend, and then there were ques­tions about Heather, Dirk’s girl­friend, and a cou­ple ques­tions about Jesse, Molly’s boyfriend. As luck would have it, the fam­ily would meet both Holli and Heather in no time.

We had a great meal: steak and lob­ster and potato. Then a dog showed up, and every­one went nuts. Karin was try­ing very hard to get every­one to keep it out­side, but every­one was try­ing very hard to get it into the house. This dog was small, but solid (fat), and we even­tu­ally pitched it back into the snow. Then we began open­ing presents, and then I hear, “Are you going to say ‘Hi’ to her?” Holli was there. So I rushed to her side to help taper the flow of rel­a­tives. There were a ton of pic­tures taken, presents opened, and then home­made ice cream.

Then at 9:30, Bryce, Lind­sey, Dirk, Heather, Me, and Holli trav­eled to Cen­tury The­atres to watch The Pro­duc­ers. Appar­ently there was some con­fu­sion about the movie. Bryce and Lind­sey thought that Dirk had reserved tick­ets for them to see The Pro­duc­ers, oth­er­wise they would have wanted to go to King Kong, but their ticket’s said “Dirk” on them, which was coin­ci­den­tally the cashier’s name also. As it was, I got to meet the Gregg fam­ily. I won’t lie; I was very ner­vous. There was Larry, Carol, Aunt Gayle, Adam, Cari, Marissa, and Jared. Thanks to the inter­net, I had a pretty good idea of what they peo­ple looked like before I met them.

I enjoyed the movie, and I think that Holli did, too. Britty was excited to see it, but she missed most of it because she fell asleep. I think Dirk and Heather enjoyed it, but I don’t think the movie was really Bryce and Lindsey’s style. It’s alright. It was foggy out, so the travel back to the house was slow. I said good­bye to Holli, and I told her to call me or Bryce when she got back. So, I stayed up, talk­ing with Dirk about movies, until he went to bed. She called, all was good, went to bed, and then woke back up.

The day after Christ­mas is THE DAY that peo­ple go to the stores to return presents or spend more money. I set out with exactly that intent. We hit up the mall hard­core, play­ing the name game. I didn’t do so well this time, but it’s always nice to intro­duce more peo­ple to the game. I didn’t buy much at the mall. I did get a new cologne, though, with Britty’s help. From there we ate at HuHot. It was good. I like HuHot. Appar­ently you’re not sup­posed to get more than one bowl at a time, so I did that my sec­ond time up. From there we went to Scheel’s, where Britt got snow­pants. From there it was to Best Buy. At Best Buy I got recharge­able bat­ter­ies for my dig­i­tal cam­era, finally, so I think my dig­i­tal cam­era upgrades and acces­sories are prob­a­bly done. From there we went to Petco, where we got to watch some fan­tas­tic fer­ret fight­ing. I hate the smell of dog, so I spent my time in the bird cage pre­tend­ing that I knew everyone’s name. “Skit­tles, don’t bite that. Leave it alone, Skittles.”

Then we drove home, very slowly, in the fog. Mom kept call­ing, so the last time that she did, all we did was scream into the phone. Finally home, we unpacked and just hung out until even­tu­ally every­one left or went to sleep. All in all, it was a good Christmas.

• From Sue
  • The Chronic-what-cles of Nar­nia Box Set
• From Karen
  • Alaska moose socks
  • Alaska orna­ment
• From Karin
  • Gift card to Applebee’s
• From Grandma and Grandpa
  • $25.00 cash
• From Tony
  • Bertie Bott’s Every Fla­vor Beans
• From Bryce
  • Sushi Secrets
• From Molly
  • PJ pants
• From Brenna
  • Pic­ture frame
• From Mom and Dad
  • DVD burner
  • Airbed air matress
  • Airbed air pump
  • Mul­ti­pur­pose deep-fat fryer, steamer, thingy